My Father, My Dad
by coffeeplease
Summary: NEW CHAPTER. Jack's POV. Thank you for reading. I hope people are enjoying these!
1. Chapter 1

Title: My Father, My Dad

Author: coffeeplease

Rating: YTEEN (references to "sleeping with")

Category: AU, little angsty, little sappy

Spoiler Info: Everything up to Holy Night, and then it veers into AU

Disclaimer: WB, NBC, John Wells, Aaron Sorkin... owners. I just lease and try not to stain the carpet. Lawsuits don't look good on me.

E-mail address for feedback: permission: Sure, just tell me first

Notes: Feedback is a girl's best friend, not diamonds. Little vignette from an AU universe.

I never really knew my father. He brought a whole new meaning to the word "absentee." I know it was his job. It wasn't his fault. He would have been there if he could. At least, that's what he told me on the telephone.

Guess it was kind of cool having a submarine officer as a father. All the kids at school thought it was a "Hunt for Red October" type-thing. When he came home, he was always in uniform, shoes polished, shirt starched. He'd kneel down and give me a hug, but he was a complete stranger to me.

Not a complete stranger, let me rephrase that. He was there for some things. Not my birth; they had been called to the Persian Gulf. President Bartlet himself called the sub to tell my father of my arrival. The President lied and said that C.J. had been at my mother's side. But she wasn't. My dad told me so.

He was there for my kindergarten graduation. Things were very tense by then. My parents had tried to keep me ignorant. Kids know more than they let on and I was a perceptive youngster. My dad took me to the park a lot during that time. He tried very hard to gloss over certain things, to make things easier for me. It must have been hard for him. He was part of the reason there were so many problems.

But you can't block out the fights that happen ten feet away from your bedroom. My mother would beg my father to keep his voice down. But I could hear his slightly whiny tones as he went off about "Josh this" and "Josh that."

"Like you don't have little flings all over the globe," my mother retorted.

"Josh isn't a fling, Donna." My father in no way denied his infidelities and my mother didn't deny anything about Josh. They changed the subject so they could argue technicalities, but it all boiled down to the same thing.

I was told much later. My parents only married because she was pregnant and he thought it was the right things to do. He was big on that; the right thing, the honorable thing. He'd try to teach me those values in the brief times we saw each other. Some of it sunk in. But I was far more interested in Mets scores.

My mother would never speak ill of my father. He was a good man, she said after the divorce. It wasn't anyone's fault. Of course, my father blamed someone, that someone's name being Josh Lyman. He would badmouth Josh when he saw me, which was hardly ever after the divorce. It killed me. It hurt much worse than the actual divorce.

No child wants to hear his father talk trash about his dad.

Dad was around all the time. He was there when I was born. He held me as I took my first steps; there are pictures. Pictures that my father would brandish as proof that my dad was trying to steal away his family. What steal? We were never really my father's to begin with.

I did call Josh "Daddy" mistakenly as a small child. His eyes would become unbearably sad when I did. "I wish," he'd whisper and pull me in for a hug. He didn't need to wish, he was Daddy in every way that counted. Read me bedtime stories. Taught me how to throw a ball.

It made my father very angry and my young childhood was punctured with whispered conversations and heated fights. The worst was my fourth birthday, the last year Bartlet was in office. My parents had not yet divorced. My father was trying to be my dad, but I saw him as a stranger. I couldn't help it.

We were in the mural room opening presents. A Big Bird stuffed animal from C.J. Books from Toby. My dad gave me a mountain of presents, including a baseball glove, a tricycle and a tiny backpack. Everyone had on big smiles for me, but it was tense. Toby, C.J., Leo... they all kept trading glances between my father and my dad. When Abbey took a picture of me, my mother and my dad and whispered, because she couldn't help it, "the happy family", something inside my father snapped. My father asked to speak to my dad outside.

Years later, Toby filled me in on some of the details. He went out with them, acting as my dad's wingman. My father accused my dad of sleeping with his wife. My dad had no recourse for that. He couldn't deny it. He could only say that he was taking care of his family.

"You mean my family," my father yelled.

"No," my dad said softy. "I mean my family."

My father hit him. My dad refused to hit him back. Toby pulled them apart. He told me that Josh couldn't hit my father back because my father was right. Josh was sleeping with his wife and stealing his family. But Josh was also not about to stop. He wasn't going anywhere. My father, however, left the next morning for the next port of call and seethed on a nuclear sub somewhere in the Pacific.

I wonder why it took so long for my parents to divorce. I guess what happened is that my mother would file and my father would refuse to sign the papers. Or he would plead with her. Give her statistics on how two-parent families were much better for children than single mothers.

My mother was single all of two days after the divorce finally went through. We packed up our little apartment and moved to a much bigger townhouse, where I already had a bedroom. My dad's place. My father would never go and see me there. I always had to meet him somewhere else.

My mother married my dad and gave me a brother and a sister. I never refer to them as "half-brother" or "half-sister." Eventually, we moved to a big house in the suburbs. Life from then on was the normal family life, with little ups and downs. Every so often, the call would come in from the nuclear sub and I would be forced by my mother and dad to talk to someone I really didn't know at all.


	2. The Jab and the Punch

Title: The Punch and The Jab

Author: coffeeplease

Rating: YTEEN (references to "sleeping with",a few swear words)

Category: AU, little angsty, little sappy

Spoiler Info: Everything up to Holy Night, and then it veers into AU

Disclaimer: WB, NBC, John Wells, Aaron Sorkin... owners. I just lease and try not to stain the carpet. Lawsuits don't look good on me.

E-mail address for feedback: permission: Sure, just tell me first

Notes: Josh's POV, a companion to "My Father, My Dad." Thank you everyone for the great feedback on that one. Tell me what you think of this.

In the beginning, it felt like the honorable thing to do. Step in, because Jack was gone so often and I was always there. Always, from Donna puking in my trash can (she had horrible morning sickness) to the doctor handing me the scissors to cut the cord. I had to take care of them, but if I said it was out of respect for Jack Reece, I would be lying.

A punch in the gut. I felt like puking into my trash can the day she told me. A punch in the gut and then a jab across the face. She was pregnant. They were getting married. She was pregnant and they were getting married. She had to say it a few times for me to actually comprehend it. I don't recall what I said to her, if I even offered congratulations, because I was in profound shock.

I found myself very, very drunk that night. And the next night. All of our coworkers, from the President down to the janitor's assistant were shooting me sympathetic, worried looks. Out of respect for Donna, I was sober for the wedding. But I found myself sitting on my hands when the priest asked if anyone objected. I don't think I was the only one.

Donna didn't really love him, that much I knew. She thought it was the right thing to do for the baby and I couldn't object to that. Two-parent families are better for kids than single mothers, especially single mothers who work at the White House and have pain-in-the-ass bosses like me. The idea that the father didn't necessarily have to be the biological one didn't really hit me until later.

Until I was a father. Until I had a son, who wasn't mine but was in every way that mattered.

It seemed like Jack was transferred and deployed before the last piece of wedding cake had been eaten. I know he believes that I had something to do with it, but I didn't. He thinks there was some master plan, that I deliberately sabotaged his marriage and stole his child from him. I'm not that guy. I never thought I would be that guy. I never thought I'd be sleeping with a married woman until I was. By then, I was deeply in love with Donna and our son. Nothing would have tore me away from them, not even the husband and father.

He was in the Middle East and I was still here. Letting Donna throw up in my trash can and watching ultrasound videos with her and assembling baby furniture. We weren't involved romantically, not then. I didn't think I was going to be a father figure for the kid. I was just being Josh, Donna's boss and friend. I was taking care of her and I thought I was doing the right, honorable thing.

I was, but I was also still reeling. The punch and the jab were hard to recover from. She was having another man's baby. She was married. I felt fate chastising me for sitting on my hands, for letting this happen, for not doing a damn thing to stop it. Moreover, I felt impotent and alone. Donna marrying Jack Reece stirred up more self-loathing than I knew I could feel. When I wasn't helping Donna or doing my job, I was pitying myself.

But that Tuesday when Donna came into my office, her face etched in pain, and told me her water had broke, I had no time for self-pity. I was too busy rushing her to the hospital, feeding her ice-chips, helping her breath through the contractions. I was also too busy to think about Jack Reece; everything was focused on Donna.

I held him first. Doctors don't know any better; they see a man in the delivery room and they assume he must be the father. I counted fingers, I counted toes. I was briefly alarmed by the soft spot until the nurse assured me it was normal. I gave him to Donna and put my arm around both of them. It was then things profoundly changed.

Again, I couldn't help but be there. Wasn't so much about doing the right thing anymore. I just... had to be. I really, really wanted to be. I didn't know that this was fatherhood. I just knew that those two beings were extremely precious to me. Every protective instinct went into overdrive; self-pity slowly replaced by determination. He didn't have to grow up with an absent father figure. I was right here.

It was also just a matter of inertia. There was really nothing that Donna or I, or Jack Reece, could have done about it. I'm not proud of having slept with another man's wife, of having done so for years without much remorse. The only real remorse I felt was for our son for having to go through all the drama and pain. He was not oblivious to it and I honestly do feel terrible that I am between a biological father and his son.

It was me he called "Daddy" first. It was me who changed diapers and tried to calm him when he teethed. Donna and I set up a little port-a-crib in my office, with Leo's permission, so we could work after daycare closed and so they wouldn't go home and leave me. I really didn't want them to leave me. So we'd work on appropriations bills and judicial nominees while we took care of our son.

The baby was nine months old when everything changed. It wasn't sudden, not for either of us. Late nights at the office became late nights at either of our apartments. I gave up my guest bedroom for the baby, even decorated his room with a baseball theme. Hugs turned into kisses turned into "messing around" turned into making love until the sun came up or our son woke up.

She filed for divorce a week after we first made love. He refused to sign the papers. She filed again and again for almost five years. He's a smart man and he quickly figured out what was going on. After a few years, everyone from the President to the janitor's assistant knew. If he had the politician's mind, he would have gone to the press. He could have ruined me for sleeping with my married assistant.

He never did. He swung actual punches at me, not political ones. A number of times, but it didn't change anything. I stood there and took it and later it was me, not him, whose wounds Donna would attend to. Being punched by Jack Reece was less painful then the sharp jab I felt when Donna first told me. That may have been one of the most painful moments of my life.

I was honestly surprised that our coworkers sympathies fell with me, not him. Donna and Jack were married. He was the father. I was the supposed interloper. The political disaster of the situation, not to mention the emotional disaster, should have sent the White House reeling. Instead of yelling at me, C.J. bought me (and Toby) a "World's Greatest Dad" coffee mug. Instead of firing me, Leo gave me time off when my son was in the hospital with a broken leg. President Bartlet began speaking of Donna to me as if she were my wife.

I once overheard a conversation between Toby and Leo. My son was around three years old at the time.

"She filed again over the weekend. Maybe we should consider..."

"We can't, Toby. As much as I would like to end this painful charade, the White House can't be seen as getting involved in a marital dispute."

"Leo..."

"Especially a martial dispute in which the wife is cheating on the husband with her boss, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff."

"He's been a husband and a father while Jack Reece, Mr. Honor and Duty, has been off on a boat."

"Jack Reece is serving his country. We should probably show him a little respect, given that he has the power to screw us over and hasn't."

"I just... would like to have Josh's back on this. Donna makes him happy. The kid makes him ecstatic."

"Toby, I want the divorce to go through as much as you do, as much as Donna does, as much as Josh does. Hell, we all had to sit on our hands when the priest asked if anyone had good reason that they shouldn't be wed." Leo's voice changed. "I wish Josh had stood up then..."

"Josh thought he was doing the honorable thing."

"Now he's doing the honorable thing. I never thought I'd consider adultery honorable, but Josh is her husband and he is the father in the ways that count. Pieces of paper don't change reality. But its a mess and we can't wade through..."

Leo was right. It was a mess. But it was also my family and they were mine. I didn't steal them; they were mine to begin with. Leo was also right in that I should have stopped the marriage from even taking place. Had I known then what I know now, I would have thrown myself in between them.

I would say that I would have never volunteered to play matchmaker, but I love my son too much to negate his existence. Yes, he could have been mine biologically had I refused, but he wouldn't be the same little guy that licks the frosting off the cupcake before he eats it. Who can't hit the ball at all, but catches like a pro.

Eventually Jack did sign the papers. Donna and I married and had two amazing children of our own. But my eldest is my eldest. I know I'm not his stepfather; I'm really the only father he's even known. He's still my little guy, our baby, the one who once spread pesto sauce all over our leather couch and who hummed to himself when I was giving him a bath.

Jack Reece missed all that. But I was here.


	3. I Am Not Hester Prynne

Title: I Am Not Hester Prynne

Author: coffeeplease

Rating: TEEN (references to "sleeping with", a swear word in French)

Category: AU, little angsty, little sappy

Spoiler Info: Everything up to 6th season finale is fair game

Disclaimer: WB, NBC, John Wells, Aaron Sorkin... owners. I just lease and try not to stain the carpet. Lawsuits don't look good on me.

E-mail address for feedback: permission: Sure, just tell me first

Notes: I read the four novels referenced here years ago. ("Scarlet Letter" was high school.) So if I've butchered their plots, I apologize, to you and my college lit prof. Same AU as My Father, My Dad and The Punch and The Jab. Donna's POV.

I packed up the books in a haphazard fashion. Really, everything that didn't have a memory of Jack was thrown into a box. Since he was never around, most things I owned were not tainted by association. My son's room was rather simple; everything he had there, it seemed, he already had a duplicate of at Josh's house. Except pictures of his biological father, which I packed up carefully for him. He may want them someday.

You know fate is laughing at you when you open up a box of books at your new fiancee's house, after having an adulterous relationship with him for several years, and find The Scarlet Letter, Madame Bovary and Lady Chatterley's Lover on top. I started laughing. Josh crawled up behind me to see what was so funny.

"Well, you were always one for the research," he mumbled as he took Madame Bovary out of the box.

"Somehow, I don't think our story qualifies as classic literature." His hand came up to massage my back. "For one, I'm not planning on taking any arsenic."

"Thank God, I just got you here, finally." He kissed me lightly. "Hester." He chuckled to himself.

"Not funny, Dimmesdale."

I'm not Hester Prynne or Emma Bovary or Connie Chatterley. The White House didn't brand me with a scarlet "A" and, as much as Josh claims to be an "outdoorsman", we've never made love in the woods. I never thought I would cheat on the man I married but I never thought I'd be in a loveless marriage, either.

Look at those three women. Dimmesdale died in Hester's arms and she wore the letter to her grave. Emma Bovary commits suicide, spurned by the man she loved, one of the many adulterous relationships she has. I guess poor Lady Chatterley and I had it similarly; we waited forever for a divorce. But still, in all those stories, the woman was made to suffer. The man, in most cases, not so much.

But I know Josh suffered. He didn't like the position he was in, who would? Josh and I, we both have values and principles and we were breaking so many rules we never wanted to break. Don't sleep with your boss. Don't sleep with your assistant. Don't sleep with a married woman. Don't cheat on your husband.

Sometimes the story line is not the one we choose.

Am I going to feel guilty the rest of my life? Probably. The love Josh and I have is worth it and I don't regret what was done, but how I wish I had never said "I do" all those years ago. Some nights, I would think of the other Donna, in the parallel universe, who didn't marry Jack. She had the baby "by herself" except she was never really by herself. Like me, she had a boss who held her head while she vomited and kept his mini-fridge well stocked with Cherry Garcia and kosher dill.

Jack saw me one time when I was pregnant. His exact words: "Well, you've gotten, er, big."

He called the baby "his little sailor." Funny, my son gets seasick. My son has inherited so many more traits from the man he calls "Daddy" than the man whose sperm actually hit the egg. He slips and falls in the new shoes I buy him. He is, in his mother's opinion, a little too obsessed with the Mets chances this year. He tends to talk a lot. My son likes the sound of his own voice. He is caring and compassionate and witty. Just like Dad.

You can't force a family. I think those six years or so of my life proved it. Do I really think my son's life was improved because I married his biological father? I absolutely do not. Quite the opposite, in fact. Do I think my son's life would have been better had Josh and I remained apart? That, I don't know. My infidelity caused pain in his young life, pain I would love to kiss and hug away, but I know I can't.

But my son without Josh in his life... unimaginable. Jack tried to force a family; Josh let one create itself around him. There was no light bulb moment for either of us in which we realized we were a family, the three of us. It was the little things, throughout the years.

The peace in Josh's eyes when he watched me feed the baby. Watching Josh, four in the morning, prepare the baby's bottle, boiling water. Josh reading "Goodnight, Moon" until his throat was sore while our three year old kept chanting, "Again!"

Jack would come home, all polished and shined. He would tell the boy about truth and honor and give him some cheap souvenir from an exotic local. He delivered ponderous truisms to a three year old and expected him to retain the knowledge. My son would nod politely until this stranger left him alone.

The marriage was rocky to begin with. To be fair, I didn't go in with high expectations. Nobody, not C.J., Toby or even the President thought it was the greatest idea. Two parent homes are better for children, we all said. We forgot to add that love was even better. I wasn't in love, I was terrified. To this man, to be wed, for the rest of my life. I felt like a 19th century heroine, being forced into a marriage for a property deed. Except no imposing male figure was doing this to me, I was doing it to myself.

We had sex maybe three times after the baby was born. He was never home. He called and he tried, but a bit halfheartedly at best. One time, he was careless and gave one of his girls at port our number. Good thing I speak French; I was able to say "Je suis l'epouse foutue de Jack." Poor girl never called back.

I don't feel any absolution in that Jack cheated most of our marriage. He had the girls at the ports, but they weren't serious. Josh and I were serious. We were serious the day he handed me his campaign badge. We were serious the day we spoke of beer and red lights. We were serious that first awkward kiss, when we both knew it was wrong and we both knew we were powerless to stop it.

The plot just kept moving. Jack was a roadblock. A roadblock that gave me my son, so I will always be grateful and a bit guilty for plowing over him with such intensity. But my real marriage started the day Josh told me he loved me, was in love with me.

I never thought Jack would fight the divorce. I almost skipped to my lawyers office the day I filed; being in love and happy and ultimately quite naive. Josh thought it would be over in a heartbeat, too. He bought a ring and waited. Patiently. For almost five years.

Jack plead, used guilt, threatened, cajoled and ultimately delivered the same truisms to me that he did to my son. He cold have picked up a pen and saved himself the breath. He figured it out, eventually. Everyone did. Josh and I could only hide so much and we were waiting for the day when we wouldn't have to hide at all.

It angers me. Maybe I am like Emma Bovary; honor means less to me than love and passion. My wedding day meant much less to me than the weekends where C.J. or Toby, once even Leo, would take our child and we would hole away in some remote location and luxuriate in being with each other. The many dinners cooked together, one meal for our son, who was picky, and one meal for us. That fateful evening when I cut both their hair a bit too short.

The Valentine's Day where he filled my entire cubicle with roses and bought me a signed copy of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "Love In The Time of Cholera." He underlined the ending for me, when Florentino finally makes love to Fermina on the boat, but they have to pretend the boat is quarantined for cholera or else cause a scandal. No port would allow them to dock again, so they remain on the river forever. In a note that trumped the famous Art and Artistry of Alpine Skiing inscription, Josh wrote:

Donnatella,

I know boats are a sensitive subject for us, but I would happily spend the rest of my life with you confined to a small boat on a river. (And you know how seasick I get.) I'd happily spend the rest of my life with you anywhere. Unlike Florentino, I didn't have to wait until we were elderly. Like Florentino, I would have waited forever.

All my love,

Joshua

I read about true love all my life. My bookshelf is full of romance, tragic romance. Jack and I were not a tragic romance, tragic maybe, but there was not much romance to be found. Josh and I plowed through the red lights and roadblocks and I realized that fiction doesn't give you an accurate sense of true love at all. Just a glimpse.

Josh was my husband for those years and I was his wife. Truthfully, I was performing a lot of "wifely duties" for Josh before Jack Reece's shadow ever appeared on the White House lawn. But the partnership we already had before the romance kicked in. Jack never asked me if I approved of the long tours at sea. He never wanted my input on his career.

"I don't know if I should. What do you think?"

"On the plus side, you'd be running your own campaign. With a candidate that you really respect. Will's gonna run Russell. You wouldn't have the role in the Russell campaign you'd really want."

"Run him straight into the ground. What should I do, Donna?"

"Fly to Houston, see what he says."

"See, the thing is, I don't want to run a Santos campaign."

I stopped slicing tomatoes and looked at him.

"You don't?"

He kept stirring the pasta. Our son was watching cartoons in the living room.

"I don't want to apart from the two of you for that long."

I stared at him.

He continued, absently stirring. "The only way I would do it was if you two would come with me. And that means yanking him out of preschool and... and... he has a lot of friends there. I don't know if that would be good for him."

I was still married to another man, but it was just a dusty old chapter from a book. My son and I followed Josh; Santos won. Not long after, the divorce finally went through. Josh and I married quickly after and had two adorable little Lymans who delight in torturing their older brother. He loves them, though. Someday, all three of them will be in high school and be assigned to read "The Scarlet Letter." I wonder if my eldest will think of his own mother.

But I am not Hester Prynne.


	4. What Honorable Men Do

Title: What Honorable Men Do

Author: coffeeplease

Rating: YTEEN (references to "sleeping with", one swear word)

Category: AU, little angsty, little sappy

Spoiler Info: Everything up to Holy Night, and then it veers into AU

Disclaimer: WB, NBC, John Wells, Aaron Sorkin... owners. I just lease and try not to stain the carpet. Lawsuits don't look good on me.

E-mail address for feedback: permission: Sure, just tell me first

Notes: Thank you, everyone, who has giving me feedback or who has just read these puppies and enjoyed them. This one's the same AU as I Am Not Hester Prynne, etc... Jack's POV. (Just as Christian Slater is in the news again!)

This is what honorable men do. If another man asks them if they are "getting in between anything" by asking a girl out, they reply with honesty. They reply "yes" if that is the answer. They don't attempt to play Yenta in the first place. Honorable men do not say "no", only to change their answer to "yes" a few years later. A few years and wedding anniversaries later, I should say.

To be fair, it was the last time Josh Lyman lied about Donna Moss Reece, now Lyman, to me. Later, he just wouldn't answer the question. As if the answer wasn't staring me in the face; a toothbrush in the holder that wasn't mine, a necklace I knew I hadn't bought her and my son calling another man "Daddy."

What could hurt worse than that and the worst part is that you can't blame the little boy. He's just stating the truth, his truth. One of the things I've tried to teach my son, in the brief moments I've had with him, is honesty. Be honest, most of all to yourself. If I had been honest with myself, I would probably not have asked Donna Moss out to begin with.

If she had been honest with me, she wouldn't have accepted my invitation. If Josh had been honest with himself, he would have told me there was a problem. He wouldn't have filled my ears with stories of Ille Nastase, painting the picture of a slightly demented, very sweet ditz, the one who mistakenly voted for the wrong Presidential candidate, even though she worked for Bartlet.

That girl may have been around, but she didn't end up being the woman I married.

Motherhood changed her. And I should have been there, I know, just as I know that C.J. Cregg was nowhere near the goddamn delivery room. You can't laugh in the President's face, even when he tells you a blatant lie. He is the Commander-In-Chief; I wish he had had more honor than that.

Donna knew the navy was one of those careers; in a way, it was much like her own. Filled with long hours, sacrifice and not much control over your destiny. But it was clear that her expectations were higher than I was able to deliver. I missed the pregnancy, I missed the birth, I missed the preschool interviews, I missed walks to the playground. I missed everything and if she thinks I don't kick myself for it, than she thinks nothing of me.

I will never be able to forgive Josh Lyman and I don't think I should be expected to. I won't be able to forgive Donna, either, but her actions are more understandable to me. I couldn't be there and she needed to replace me, like replacing a faulty screw in a machine. The boy needed a male figure, or at least a second parental figure, around. She wanted someone in her life who would be there. It begs the question why she even bothered to marry me.

We weren't in love, but it was one of those things. We were on the precipice; if I had stayed on shore, we would have fallen in love. It was rushed into and all her colleagues were against the marriage, either blatantly (Toby Ziegler), subtly (Leo McGarry) or drunkenly (Josh Lyman.) She seemed determined to make it work, as was I. And that seemed like enough of a starting point.

I think I did fall in love. She was... is... a great lady. Even with my bitterness, I can still say she is far more interesting than the girl who dropped her underwear at the art gallery. It amazed me how well read she was. I was astonished to learn she spoke French. She swore like a sailor when she stubbed her toe and I should know what that sounds like. She could hold her alcohol like an Irishman and made fiery Italian love in bed.

That information was not part of the sales pitch Josh gave me. Omission by choice or omission by ignorance, I'll probably never know. Various people who worked in the White House have told me that Josh was always trying to sabotage Donna's relationships. I never thought he would sink so low as to sabotage her marriage.

The eyes of the White House held one emotion for me: pity. High ranking government officials, the Press Secretary, the Communications Director, the Chief of Staff, the President... all feeling ever so sorry for me, all feeling protective of the adulterous couple in their midst. No indignation, no shame, no disgust, no worries about the press or the public, just a happy smiling family for the camera, the husband relegated to standing on one side.

I could have ruined Josh Lyman, but I won't match one dishonor with another. I still figured I could get my wife back. One day, I went to see C.J. Cregg. Why I thought she would help, I don't know. Josh Lyman's brothers and sister-in-arms always had his back.

"It doesn't look good for the White House."

"Jack, that's my problem to deal with." To be fair, she said this in a very compassionate voice, filled to the brim with pity.

"He's sleeping with his assistant, who happens to also be my wife."

Everyone, Josh and Donna included, refused to confirm or deny that. The Press Secretary, she was honest.

"Yes, yes, he is. But Jack... "

"Why aren't you upset over this?"

"I'm not her husband, Jack. And, you know, I mean..." She was struggling with words. "Okay, there have been times when he's said that he'd resign. If it ever came out, he'd just resign. He has said, repeatedly, that Donna, and his... your... son are more important to him than his career."

"And they aren't more important to me than mine?" I said, angry at her for the jab.

She grimaced. "I don't know, are they?"

"A military career means certain sacrifices..."

Her pity seemed to just melt away as she interrupted me. "And a career in the White House doesn't?"

"Doesn't seem like Josh and Donna are sacrificing much of anything at the moment. They get to work in the White House, as boss and assistant, go home after a long day's work and make love in my bed. While I am missing vital years of my son's life and serving my country."

She blanched. They could protect all they want. They still had no excuses. "You're entitled, Jack. You're entitled to be angry. You're entitled to be bitter. You're entitled to even go to the press if you want to give me a coronary. But you know what its like when you serve your country with someone for a long period of time. When people are firing bullets at you, when you're working twenty-hour days, when it seems like you're under siege all the time. You protect your comrades. And when they find happiness and a love, and Jack I know you don't want to hear this, but a love like I've never seen, not even read about in books... when they find that, you want to protect it for them, too."

The most recent time I saw the two of them was at our son's little league game. We sat on opposite ends of the bleachers, me in my uniform soon to return to base. They had been married for awhile at that point, long enough to have their own child, bouncing on his father's knee.

My son had told me about him, his baby brother. The baby cried all night, barfed all the time and my son had had no takers when he offered to sell the child for ten dollars. I laughed but told him that he had to be good to his little half-brother, take care of him. He scrunched up his face and asked why.

"That's what honorable little boys do."

My son can catch a baseball all day long, but he strikes out every single time. I've never taught him how to do either of those things. Josh did. He's obsessed with the Mets; Josh again. He runs to Josh with every scrapped knee and comes to him with the questions he has. Josh takes him to the doctor, signs his report cards, punishes him when he's done wrong, hugs him when he's had a bad dream and tucks him back in, telling him that he loves him. And he does. Josh Lyman loves my son as if he were his own.

I can hate the man for many things, many wrongs he committed. He shouldn't have been sleeping with his assistant, let alone another man's wife. But, if I am truly honest, he should not be faulted for the things he has done for my son. He took care of him when I couldn't. I can't deny it. But it hurts to see that my son has more Mets trading cards than G.I. Joes. I can't deny that, either.

He could have been a father to my son without having been a husband to my wife. It may have felt right to them, but it was still wrong. The military has a code, a code of honor. Loyalty, duty, friendship... all important. But you must have honor. There's a difference between right and wrong. It is distinct and unimpeachable. Josh and Donna were wrong, very wrong and yet this wrong goes unpunished. A new marriage, a new baby, a new life for Donna Moss Reece Lyman.

I tried to fix it. That's what you do when something breaks, you fix it. But if I am honest with myself, I will admit it. Even though it kills me, I will admit that if true love exists, it exists nowhere stronger than in those two. It did when I asked him if I was getting in between anything.

An honorable man would've told the truth.


End file.
